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Definition: Marlowe, Christopher from Philip's Encyclopedia

English playwright and poet. Marlowe helped make blank verse the vehicle of Elizabethan drama. Much of his success derives from his ability to humanize his heroes, such as Tamburlaine the Great (1590), The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus (1604), and The Jew of Malta (1633). His masterpiece is the tragedy Edward II (1592). His greatest poems are Hero and Leander (1598) and The Passionate Shepherd (1599). Marlowe served as a spy in Francis Walsingham's intelligence service.

Marlowe, Christopher

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
English poet and dramatist. His work includes the blank-verse (written in unrhymed verse) plays Tamburlaine the Great in two parts (1587–88), The Jew of Malta ( c. 1591), Edward II ( c. 1592) and Dr Faustus ( c. 1594), the poem Hero and Leander (1598), and a translation of parts of Ovid's Amores . Marlowe transformed the new medium of English blank verse into a powerful, melodic form of expression. He was born in Canterbury and educated at Cambridge University, where he is thought to have become a government agent. His life was turbulent, with a brief imprisonment in connection with a man's death in a brawl (of which he was cleared), and a charge of atheism (following statements given under torture by the English dramatist Thomas Kyd ). He was murdered in a Deptford tavern, allegedly in a dispute over the bill, but it may have been a political killing. Marlowe's work, considered as a whole, is remarkable for its varied, and even conflicting moods. Hero and Leander and the early play…
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Marlowe’s innovations and unique dramatic skills are frequently overshadowed by his being murdered and by his exact contemporary, William SHAKESPEARE . Unique to Marlowe is his focus on language as a central dramatic device: a form of action, image-maker, and manifestation of thought. Marlowe’s…
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Full text Article Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Come live with me and be my love; / And we will all the pleasures prove / That hills and valleys, dales and fields, / Woods or steepy mountain yields. ‘The Passionate Shepherd to his Love’ Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, / And burnèd is Apollo's laurel bough, / That sometime…
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Full text Article RELIGION

From Collins Dictionary of Quotations
We have in England a particular bashfulness in every thing that regards religion. ADDISON, Joseph The Spectator , 1712. The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion. ARNOLD, Matthew Literature and Dogma (1873). …
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Actor Edwar Alleyn, title page from Tragicall History of Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593), engraving by John Wright, London, 1636
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Full text Article Marlowe

From Merriam-Webster's Collegiate(R) Dictionary Full text Article Biographical Names
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
(baptized Feb. 26, 1564, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.—died May 30, 1593, Deptford, near London) British poet and playwright. The son of a Canterbury shoemaker, he earned a degree from Cambridge University. From 1587 he wrote plays for London theatres, starting with Tamburlaine the Great (published 1590), …
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher

From Encyclopedia of Renaissance Literature
(b. 1564–d. 1593) British poet, playwright The most brilliant of the early Elizabethan playwrights, Christopher Marlowe, was born at Canterbury to a family of humble origins. There in 1579 he received a scholarship as a Queen's scholar to the King's School—a school with a reputation for producing…
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
1564–93, English dramatist and poet, b. Canterbury. Probably the greatest English dramatist before Shakespeare, Marlowe, a shoemaker's son, was educated at Cambridge and he went to London in 1587, where he became an actor and dramatist for the Lord Admiral's Company. His most important plays are the…
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher (1564–93)

From The Oxford Companion to Theatre and Performance
English dramatist. The eldest son of a debt-ridden Canterbury shoemaker, Marlowe was awarded a scholarship to the King's School in that city in 1578, and later earned a second scholarship to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. By 1587 his Tamburlaine the Great, Part I had taken London by storm. The…
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Full text Article Marlowe, Christopher (1564–93).

From The Oxford Companion to British History
English playwright, poet, and spy, reportedly an atheist and probably homosexual. Born in Canterbury (Kent), he was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, possibly beginning his brief career as a spy on the continent while still enrolled there, and receiving his degree only after…
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